Largest dinosaur ever discovered weighed as much as 14 elephants

Everyone knows there were some big dinosaurs millions of years ago, but “big” doesn’t quite cut it. The largest animals in existence today have nothing on the massive creatures of eons ago, and that’s even more true of a dino that has just been unearthed in Argentina. Scientists have announced the discovery of the largest dinosaur ever, a new type of titanosaur that weighed more than 90 tons.

These titanosaurs walked the Earth about 95 million years ago, but it would have walked slowly. It was mind-bogglingly big at 180,000 pounds (80,000 kg) and 130 feet (40 meters) long. To help you wrap your head around just how big these creatures were, scientists at Argentina’s Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio say it weighed the same as 14 elephants, and was as long as a pair of semi trucks with trailers.

Titanosaurs are the largest examples of a class of huge herbivore dinosaurs known as sauropods. These quadrupedal land animals had long necks and tails with small heads relative to the rest of the body. They were common in North and South America about 100 million years ago, including some other very large specimens discovered in Argentina. The new species of titanosaur doesn’t have a name just yet, but is thought to be closely related to several other titanosaur species found in Argentina.

It is rare to find the full fossilized remains of sauropod dinosaurs, but this find is a bit more complete than usual. Scientists have pieced together a picture of the creature from the remains of seven individuals all killed in the same geographic area. Paleontologists speculate the animals might have become stuck in mud, which led to them becoming a meal for other dinosaurs. The plethora of carnivore teeth, but no bones, found in the area seems to support this theory.